Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

In the Sahel, a vast swath of land that stretches across the African continent, there's a worrying trend.

Jihadists of several stripes are growing in number and in influence.

We tag along with an international training exercise aimed at preparing African forces to contain the threat.

And you might think that the public's interest in the world's changing climate has been on a steady rise.

You'd be wrong.

A dive into data about online searches reveals that climate concern comes and goes.

First up, though.

Over the past six months, a pessimistic picture of the world economy has been emerging.

Speaking at the US Chamber of Commerce last week, Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, issued a warning. The global economy is at a delicate moment. Only two years ago, 75% of the global economy experienced an

upswing. So it was a synchronized growth acceleration. For this year, we expect not 75, but 70% of the global

economy to experience a slowdown in growth. Exactly the opposite of what we had.

The IMF later today will be publishing its forecast for the year.

Simon Cox is our emerging markets editor based in Hong Kong. We already know a little bit about it

from a speech Christine Lagarde gave. She pointed out that they'll be cutting their forecast.

They had expected back in January the world economy to grow by about 3.5% this year.

So it sounds like they're going to shave some off that forecast.

However, she did emphasize that the IMF does not expect a recession this year.

So it's a slowdown and one that should bottom out by about mid-year in their view.

And why are we seeing this slowdown?

So the slowdown is quite broadly based.

LeGuard pointed out that a whole variety of countries have slowed down from last year. China has been

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